I recently found information that Pew Research put out last year in regards to social media and news. Pew found that 62% of adults read news stories on social media sites. In addition, Facebook controlled the majority of the information with 44% of adults getting news from the Zuckerberg giant. Upon reading this I began to think of what news these users are getting. It has become abundantly clear that Facebook, Google (search, YouTube, etc.), Twitter and other giants in the online and social media realm have begun to censor certain viewpoints.
In 2016 it was revealed by Facebook contractors that they had been instructed to curate news that was not conservative or in support of Donald Trump. Facebook has also frequently removed groups, user accounts or removed individual posts that had views that opposed the philosophy of Facebook, essentially conservative and libertarian opinions. YouTube has begun to demonetize videos that are not against its policy but are against the viewpoints it holds. These videos are demonetized and then set to private so that no one will ever see them and the content creator never makes a dime. Mark Dice has begun to speak out against YouTube and he frequently finds himself at odds with the company.
In regards to Twitter, you can find the most vile information and photographs that you can imagine on the site. Terrorists openly recruit and operate on the site without fear. Libertarians on the other hand often find themselves put into time-out or actually blocked from using the site. Twitter used to have the motto “the free speech wing of the free speech party”. Wow, what the hell happened? In a Gizmodo article regarding the Twitter trending topics team, 90% of the team identified themselves as liberal. Gizmodo continued to report that conservative news stories were often put through two or three additional rounds of screening before that news would be approved.
This brings me to Steemit. This community is blessed to not be ran by a corporation, have censorship teams, account deletions, posts hidden or any other form of censorship in place. Sure, a whale could pound your reputation or your post but that is a single individual and it is very likely that parts of the community will return fire. I think this is the best community on the internet and once people start to wake-up they will leave these corporate sites and hopefully find a safe landing here.
One last thought, Google is the king of search and also the king of censorship. Check out the image below.
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